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A leading sports lawyer has weighed in on the fallout from Bernie Ecclestone’s payment of $100 million to settle bribery charges and has said that the Formula One boss should not worry about follow-up lawsuits.

Last month Mr Ecclestone agreed to pay German prosecutors $100 million to put the brakes on charges that he paid part of a $44 million bribe to steer the sale of a 47.2% stake in F1 to the private equity firm CVC.

Mr Ecclestone denies paying a bribe and in his concluding statement the judge in Germany said that “the charges could not, in important areas, be substantiated.” He added that “a prosecution of the defendant due to bribery is not probable as things stand.”

Nevertheless, BayernLB, the state-owned German bank which sold the F1 stake, claims that it lost out as higher bidders would have come forward if Mr Ecclestone had not engineered the sale to CVC.

Mr Ecclestone offered BayernLB $25 million to put an end to its claim against him but the bank declined. A BayernLB spokesman revealed to Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper last week that it wants a similar sum to the amount received by the prosecutors but Mr Ecclestone’s lawyer, Sven Thomas,added that he doesn’t intend to boost the offer.

“BayernLB have rejected the offer as expected. At the moment we don’t do anything. We wait to see what they are going to do. If they try to sue, they shall have no chance at all,” he said. “I don’t think they will try and sue and if they want to then OK but at the moment we don’t do anything. We made a sensible offer and they rejected it so let’s wait.”

The roadblock in BayernLB’s way is the verdict of a court case in London in February. Mr Ecclestone had been sued by German media rights firm Constantin Medien which had an agreement entitling it to 10% of the proceeds if BayernLB’s F1 stake sold for more than $1.1 billion. However, Constantin received nothing as CVC paid $828 million for it. Like BayernLB, Constantin claimed that if Mr Ecclestone had not paid a bribe to smooth the sale to CVC then another buyer would have come forward with a higher offer.

In the closing days of the trial last year BayernLB announced that it would sue Mr Ecclestone for $400 million which it said was the difference between the amount it received and the sum it should have got for its F1 stake. However, this lawsuit was put on hold in February when Constantin lost its case. The judge in London claimed that although Mr Ecclestone had entered into a “corrupt agreement” by paying to steer the F1 stake to CVC, it had not been undervalued as a result.

“There is no chance of BayernLB suing for $400 million because in the UK trial this claim was rejected,” says Mr Thomas. Other legal experts concur.

“Based on this judgment, it would be very difficult for BayernLB to show that it had suffered loss itself as a result of Mr Ecclestone’s ‘corrupt agreement’,” says Charles Braithwaite, media and sports partner at leading law firm Collyer Bristow. “This is not to say that legal proceedings will not be brought in England by BayernLB; Constantin is only one High Court decision and, in the event that BayernLB’s claim is dismissed by the same court, the bank could apply for permission to appeal.”

The spokesman for BayernLB said “we don’t have an urge to sue Ecclestone because there is no pressure. We have time to do this. Maybe we will sue and maybe not. We didn’t agree with the settlement and perhaps Ecclestone or his lawyers will think about it and call BayernLB.” He adds that “perhaps the $25 million doesn’t match with this settlement structure and perhaps somebody has to think about it because the state prosecutors in Germany got $100 million.”